The Existential Gamer

Instead of talking about games, I want to talk about gamers. Not hardcore. Not casual. But the existential gamer.

My 8 year old son has been looking forward to the new release of Sam & Max: Night of the Raving Dead and loves playing the series. Watching him, I've realized that he plays games in a very different way that I do now because he carries the game experience beyond playing the game.

For example, he talks about the game with anyone who will listen, recounting the funny parts or his attempts to solve the puzzles. Because he loves to draw, he draws pictures of the characters while sitting on his bed or riding in the car. When he plays outside with friends, they sometimes play characters from the game in some imagined setting. He's enjoying the game in other ways than just playing the game. He owns his play with the games, creating his own experiences other than what the game defines.

The last time I experienced a game in such a way was when my friends and I played Everquest in large part because we had such interesting stories to tell. Even if we played together and retold the night's events, the perspective each of us had was interesting and different, not to mention the humorous spin we added. We told stories about how we played through the game event as well as how our character behaved, somewhat separating the two. It wasn't uncommon for us to switch between first and third person: "I saw that no one was on last night . . . . Vali fought in East Karanas." Sometimes, though, the difference between player and character somewhat blurred. Yet, even for players who maintained that the character was apart from themselves, they still talked about that character outside the game with great details. Regardless, we all enjoyed the game outside of the game itself. While some of that external talk was about strategy and teamwork, we were also developing our characters while telling those stories, explaining motivations or telling some backstories. We didn't mistake those characters as "real" but they became interesting in their own ways.

But since that time, I don't talk or think about games (either playing them or the events in them) as stories. Listening to friends who play games, I don't hear them thinking that way either. It's about achievements or about the game graphics or engine or difficulty.

Certainly, a part of it has to do with the games themselves, but mostly, it's the gamer. Why recount something from Mass Effect or Super Mario Galaxy when anyone who plays it will probably have the same experience? Yet, do we really have the same experience? An multiplayer game is dynamic because it involves real people, and sometimes we can hear stories about multiplayer sessions.

There's also the consumer element. I know many gamers who are like speed readers: they consume games very quickly, and I frequently hear (from myself and others), "There are so many games to play." With so many viable platforms to play on, we have indeed more games that we can play. As a result, how do we not regard games as somewhat disposable and momentary? I also hear games talk about games as critics, how game Y isn't as good as game X.

For my son, Sam and Max are important. Not out of whack important. 'Meaningful' is a better word . . . these aren't just characters or a game that he plays and then leaves behind. His experience of those games are something he talks about, that he replays in different ways outside of the game.

It's tempting to think of this difference as one of identity and otherness. Mature gamers like myself mostly recognize our game experience as something very different from ourselves. It's a way to "get away" from jobs, pressures and the like. To get away from our "real" lives. Paradoxically, we often gain this separation by immersing ourselves in a game.

But for my son, he doesn't have that need to separate his life from the game. His immersion is different: he immerses the game into his life, allowing it to inspire his non-computer play and activities. His connection to a game that he enjoys is much deeper than mine. The boundaries are different for adults like myself where his boundaries are more fluid, thanks in large part because as an eight year old, he's still defining himself largely through play, even while working at school. When he does his math, he is making a game of the task and the numbers. Yet, for all his goofing, he is learning: He's a straight A student. So, his ways work, where boundaries between learning, work, and play, between games and life are looser, even while he clearly knows the difference between them and doesn't think the game is life. It's not that simple.

I'm reminded of a line in A Thousand Plateaus:

Be the Pink Panther and your loves will be like the wasp and the orchid, the cat and the baboon.

This Lewis-Carroll sentence comes in a passage where Deleuze and Guittari explain their theme of the rhizome, of connections and interplay. They talk about betweenness as AND logic, which is not going one way and then another but traversing both ways at the same time. In a way, they are talking about the absence of boundaries.

This is what I think he does with his work and play, life and gaming. His gaming is both more playful and more serious than mine. It's not serious in the way of using a spreadsheet to track when to do what in an RTS. It's serious in that the game is something to use for other purposes, often creative. It's serious in that he's willing to experiment more than I do with the games that he truly enjoys.

What of this difference? Should I be more like my son? Am I playing Robert Fulguhm here? In a way, yes. But it's hard for us as adults because our lives are so different. If nothing else, few adults in their 40s are still trying to define themselves, although I think we still are. Most of us probably stopped drawing, writing, singing or doing anything creative long ago because we became convinced we couldn't that. I don't think we have the playful kind of roleplaying speech and activities that my son and his friends have.

I'm not sure the world would be better if we were more like kids. But I'm thinking that we might have more fun, at least. We've designated one part of our lives to gaming, where we roleplay in safety. But what if we did more of that? Some adults do that, but they get tagged quickly as abnormal, obsessive, immature, or queer. Some adults take the games too seriously and probably forget their responsibilities too easily. The point is to play but to open up the play.

Take a linear game like Titan Quest. Rather than play it as a shopping game or just following the scripted storyline, have your character start losing his belief and faith in these gods: begin as a pious character and play the game an increasingly disillusioned character. Or maybe play as someone who's fallen in love with one of the NPCs. Write your own story here, just as if you were playing a sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto or Oblivion. Don't take the given game as the only given.

When my son and I play a multiplayer game like Ben 10 or Marvel Ultimate Alliance, I would sometimes get frustrated because he wasn't "playing the game." But he is. He's playing his own game. When we play those kind of games now, we often provide our own dialogue and talk in voices for the characters and come up with our missions. Sometimes, we play just for the sake of trying to come up with bad puns and jokes. Sometimes, we don't do anything in the game that we are "supposed" to do. Sometimes, we have no goal at all. So, I'm learning to be the existential gamer that my son is. Oddly enough, I'm finding the attitude improving my "real" life, too. I'm not getting into cosplay, but I am reminded that I'm in control of nothing except myself and my attitude about what I can't control.

To paraphrase Wordsworth, the child is the father of the gamer.

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